Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1885 — Not as Easy as It Looked. [ARTICLE]

Not as Easy as It Looked.

] It was the first evening I was in a gondola, and, alter admiring the skill and ease with which the gondolier manipulated his oar, I was struck with ; the idea of attempting the feat myself, j Nothing looked easier than to imitate i that swarthy Italian, to stand up on the rear end of the gondola and dip the oar in and out of the water. “You look tired,” I said to the gondolier; “if you like you may rest a while and I will row for you. ” Had I offered to stand on my head and walk to Milan the man could not have looked more astonished. “You, signore!” he exclaimed. “Why, you couldn’t even learn to stand up here under two months.” ‘■‘Pooh,” said I. “I have rowed boats on the Mississippi—from Memphis as far as Hopefield. Do you think I don’t know how to work this lumbering thing on the smoother waters of Venice?” The gondolier smiled a very unsatisfactory smile. “Ah, buono—good, signore. I take yon where you have a nice swim. Signore, you take clothes off.” This was consoling advice to a confident oarsman, not very flattering to my pride, still I thought I might as well follow his advice; so he "slowly pulled over the lagoons between the cemetery and Muran’s. I divested myself of all my clothing and prepared for a first lesson in the Venetian art of gondoliering. As I have said, it looks to be the easiest thing in the world. The gondolier stands at the extreme end of the long, slim boat, and the oar rests in an oar-lock that stands up from the deck a foot or eighteen inches. There is nothing to hold the oar in the lock, but this I did not notice until I •tried myself. It stayed there so quietly and pleasantly as long as the Italian was at the stem that the idea never entered my head but that it belonged there and stayed there of its own accord. Woful mistake! I had scarcely taken position on the stern of the boat and made my first stroke when the oar flew out of that lock in a miraculous manner that I am to this minute unable to understand, and I flew out of the boat into the water. Then it was that I thanked that gondolier for his timely warning and advice. The knapsack traveler does not carry with him a very extensive wardrobe, and bad I fallen into the water with my clothing on I would have been in a very bad pNght in'deed. As it was I swam around a while, bad a good bath, then climbed into the gondola and tried it over again, and with the same result. A third and fourth attempt proved no more successful, and finally I came to tlie conclusion that gondoliering was not as easy as it looked, and so dressed myself and turned the oar over to the proper hands.— Memphis Avalanche.